Letter to the Editor: Malpractice lawsuits necessary

By JANE MARSHALLDover, Tenn.

To the Editor:

HB270 would make it more difficult to win malpractice lawsuits against emergency health care providers. Chaucer posed the question "What do women want?" Who knows, but it seems obvious what doctors want: everything. They want additional tort reform because a cap on non-economic damages proved not to be the panacea that tort reformers claimed it would be.

In fact, medical malpractice insurance premiums in virtually all the states that have a cap are higher than in states that don't have a cap. Doctors want legislators to provide protection from accountability when they commit malpractice. They want to be allowed to continue practicing medicine regardless of the number of times they commit malpractice.

What do victims of medical malpractice want? They want their constitutional right to have a jury decide the appropriate damages when they go to court looking for the only justice that is available to them. They want the medical profession to do a much better job of addressing medical malpractice. They want the good doctors who stand behind that white wall of silence, which is a hallmark of the medical profession, to weed out the bad doctors. Legislators who support doctors at the expense of medical malpractice victims should be ashamed of themselves.